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Obama praises Hagel's service

Hagel accepts nomination

TOP 5 controversial Chuck Hagel positions

“My brother Tom and I together walked a lot of point, which was all right,” Chuck Hagel said in a 2002 interview for a Library of Congress Vietnam history project. “You know what happens to a lot of point men, but I always felt a little better if I was up front than somebody else.”

The former Republican senator from Nebraska, just tapped by President Barack Obama to be the next defense secretary, has been widely praised for his service in Vietnam, which got him two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross, the Army Commendation Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge and a chest full of shrapnel — some of which remains to this day.

If confirmed by the Senate, Hagel would be the first enlisted service member to be Defense secretary and the first Vietnam veteran in the post. And his brother Tom, who served alongside him, is gung-ho about the prospect as he recalled their grueling days in Vietnam in an interview with POLITICO.

“He’s going to do a great job, he’ll be totally committed to it,” Tom Hagel said. “I think he will bring special sensitivity for enlisted personnel to the job, because, of course, of his experiences as an enlisted person in Nam.”

A long line of Hagel service

Chuck Hagel was technically a draftee, joining the Army’s 9th Infantry Division. He was called in by the draft board in 1967 and immediately volunteered.

He served on the ground in Vietnam and in the jungles of Cambodia for nearly all of 1968 — the worst year of the war, with nearly 17,000 Americans killed in action.

The Hagel brothers come from a military tradition. Their father served in World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner on a B-25 bomber, and their grandfather fought in World War I.

“We were a family that grew up with the blue Legionnaires cap and a sense of responsibility and a sense of commitment to this country,” Chuck Hagel said in the Library of Congress interview. “You didn’t think about it. If the country was at war or if there was a need, everybody served, and you just anticipated your service.”

Joe Swirczek, who attended St. Bonaventure High School in Columbus, Neb., with Chuck Hagel, was drafted at the same time and went through basic training with him at Fort Bliss, Texas.

“He was very intelligent. He did a lot of reading back then,” Swirczek said. “Some of us basic trainees, sometimes in the evening if we’d have the opportunity we’d go to the PX and party a little bit or whatever, but Chuck was back in the barracks studying — reading magazines and newspapers. He was way ahead of us.”

Hagel was never noticeably scared or nervous during those eight weeks of training, said Swirczek, now 67 and retired back in Columbus.

“I was probably more nervous than Chuck,” Swirczek said. “I didn’t know what to expect, being drafted. Chuck was drafted also, but — I don’t know — Chuck had a lot more courage than I did.”

When politicians discuss the "big picture" and send troops into hostile foreign lands, the infantryman isn't first on their minds. Chuck Hagel will not forget them and will use ground forces as a last resort.

“I remember sitting on that track, another track, waiting for the dust-off [helicopter] to come and medical evacuation, and thinking to myself, you know, if I ever get out of all of this, I am going to do everything I can to assure that war is the last resort that we, a nation, a people, calls upon to settle a dispute,” he said. “The horror of it, the pain of it, the suffering of it. People just don’t understand it unless they’ve been through it.

This story should be read during Hagel's confirmation hearing. It would be difficult for anyone to question his patriotism and sincerity. His career as a senator also showed he has a conscience about committing the U.S. military to nation building. Repubs trying to slime this guy do so at their own peril.

Chuck Hagel and his brother were brave men. As a Nam vet myself, I salute them. I am 62, and I am a lot different than I was back then. I will bet 'ol Chuck is too. He apparently is a anti-semite, and a hater of Israel. I think he, along with our current commander in chief, may have difficulties discerning who our real enemies are. Respectfully submitted.

Many Americans who served in Vietnam or served during that era learned valuable leasons and that was one of them. Had America had a military draft in place, we would not likely have had the succession of Republican wars including the two in Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan costing $1.2 million per soldier annually not counting the thousands killed, the tens of thousands wounded, the 400,000 projected to go to 700,000 with PTSD, the thousands suffering from traumatic brain injuries, the hundreds of amputees and multiple amputees, the 1,000 post-combat military suicides, the lifetimes of suffering for veterans and their families, and the lifetimes of war bills and costly VA healthcare. Today's professional military represents one-tenth of one percent of the American population and most people are clueless as to the demands that have been placed upon soldiers and their families.

The Republican Party supports and promotes the big war profiteers. They are the ones who have historically pushed for military invasions and who have given us the 435+ GOP-approved war profiteers in Afghanistan and Iraq who posted over $60 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse while failing our troops and failing in their nation-building. It has been the GOP who have blocked investigations and oversight by Democrats in Congress of the war profiteers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

American needs a combat veteran like Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense--somebody that will not rush America into another war (in Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc.) based upon lies, deceit, arrogance, and greed, somebody who puts the nation's interests over corporate interests.

Chuck Hagel is very quailified for Secretary of Defense and sounds like someone that any patriot would follow over the cliff. Republicans who appose Hagel wear their Obama Derangement Syndrome on their sleave. PURE AND SIMPLE.

Chuck Hagel is very quailified for Secretary of Defense and sounds like someone that any patriot would follow over the cliff. Republicans who appose Hagel wear their Obama Derangement Syndrome on their sleave. PURE AND SIMPLE.

Chuck Hagel is very quailified for Secretary of Defense and sounds like someone that any patriot would follow over the cliff. Republicans who appose Hagel wear their Obama Derangement Syndrome on their sleave. PURE AND SIMPLE.

jopiper: Yeah, GHW Bush really showed how tough he was by sacrificing our soldiers in three, costly military inasiona, including the bogus invasion of Panama to get Noreiga who was Reagan's secret man helping to supply the murderous right-wing Contras in Nicarauga in his illegal secret war for which he should have been impeached for lying under oath about. GHW Bush served as Reagan's money bagman to Noreiga. Notice how Noreiga has been imprisoned and kept under wraps since unable to testify before the world about his US-Reagan-CIA connections?

GHW Bush also gave us the first Iraq oil war based upon lies, deceit, and oil greed just like his miscreat son, George, who got a sweetheart safe, draft-avoiding berth guarding the friendly skies of Texas in the ANG which he blew off and washed out of and whose failure to complete his military reserve requirements where carefully covered up while the GOP trashed Al Gore and John Kerry's records of active military service in Vietnam.

I did two tours in Vietnam and I figure people like Hagel and McCain left some of their manhood in the jungle and can only waffle for Leftist policies like we've come to expect from the RINOs. You can bet your jungle boots that Obama isn't going to appoint somebody with an ethical backbone when self serving reptiles are slithering close by..

I don't recall liberals praising George H W Bush or Bob Dole, or even John McCain for their bravery in combat. They called George H W Bush a "wimp" fer chrissakes. Spare us the sanctimonious blather.

Yeah but nobody tried to do a hatchet job on their records either like Rove did to Kerry.

I guess you forgot all the good old Gops at the ’04 convention wearing Band-Aids on their chests implying that the severity of the wounds he received his Purple Hearts for could have been have been treated with one of those.

Attack their strengths is Roves motto.

And if I wanted to which I don’t I could go after HW, for bailing on his crew. The gunners on an Avenger are so packed into their airplane they can’t wear parachutes while manning their positions.

A water landing would have been better.

He was even quoted in the foreword of a book on Iwo “I wonder what happened to those guys” well I think I know!